even when you least expect it, expect it. shenzheners will find another corner to light up; even tianmian glows at night.
more neon here.
went for lunch at a favorite italian restaurant and what did we see? the rage for renovation continues to transform the city. along taizi road, the main strip in front of seaworld, three areas are under re-construction: the cluster of sanyo factories from the early eighties is being turned into a creative industries center. they have just begun removing walls, but it may in fact turn into another area of glass and black walls. across the street from seaworld is times plaza, where the old sushi restaurant has been torn down. architecturally it was relatively recent and boasted a waterwall; the building was glass and water fell down the sides filling a pool (moat?) that surrounded the building. further east, one of the old office buildings has been torn down, and with it the shops that used to sell cantonese-sized faux couture– in u.s. sizes i wear an 8 or medium, in the world of cantonese-sized faux couture i am an extra, extra-large. also, another building that has not yet been demolished has nevertheless been repainted bright yellow. for the interested, pictures, here.
neon update: it occurs to me that the neon lights are a good way of upgrading without demolishing buildings or painting them bright yellow. although i kind of like the bright buildings that are starting to show up. the shekou china communications building is a late eighties early nineties examplar of state-of-the-art. just recently it has been caged. at night, and from a distance, the building tower is now a relatively clear television that broadcasts commercials and public service announcements… there’s another downtown television is strictly advertising, lately l’oreal for men and cars…
also, a graffiti update: someone is still at work re-covering walls.
several days ago, yang qian and i walked from nanshan to beitou village by way of xiangnan village. together, the three villages are strung along a narrow alley that was once the main road connecting nantou county seat to shekou. the villages have been surrounded on all sides and are invisible from the main roads.
i keep photographing these villages because they remain, for me, what makes shenzhen unique. it is the tension between cosmopolitan versions of modernity and village versions of modernity that drives shenzhen development. it is the form of ghettoization here.
so, images from that walk.
this week shenzhen hosts a conference on sustainable, urban development. yesterday, at the flag raising ceremony we were told the new limit for air-conditioning is 26 degrees centigrade. houhai marches on. now that the roads have been layed, the next step is partitioning the land and putting in infrastructure for new residential and commercial areas. another houhai walk.
houhai, again. another encounter with that which became obsolete in less than ten years. another walk through the determined construction of an alternative world. several views of the same stretch of new road.
there’s a chinese proverb 沧海桑田 (the oceans become mulberry fields) that is used to describe largescale transformation. perhaps, 沧海楼盘 could be used to describe shenzhen’s development, or at least the policy of 移山填海 (move mountains, fill in the ocean), but it wouldn’t mean only massive change. something about the necessary scale of transformation to compete economically. something in keeping with another updated proverb i’ve heard: 谈金论股 (discuss money and debate the market)–a puny take on “discuss today and debate the past (谈今论古). or the rewrite of the national anthem:
起来还没有进股市的人们
把你们的资金全部变成神奇的股票
中国人民族到了最疯狂的时刻
每个人都激情发出震颠的吼声
涨停涨停涨停
怀着暴富的梦想
钱进钱进钱进进。 what other new proverbs have you heard?
back in shenzhen, wandering the streets of shekou, reorienting myself to newly paved roads and recently razed sites. signs of all kinds assault the eyes: graffiti (of varying quality), the ubiquitous advertizing (even garbage cans can be rented to eager merchants), and, of course, deng xiaoping’s calligraphy, which once confirmed reform and now is itself advertizing for the seaworld plaza. a selection of signs, here.
administratively speaking, the term “shenzhen special economic zone” refers to nanshan, futian, luohu and yantian districts. baoan and longgang districts lay beyond what was once called the second line (二线) and is now more commonly referred to as outside the gate (关外). if memory serves, this linguistic shift took place several (2? 3?) years ago, echoing the loosening of border restrictions between the special economic zone and the rest of china. previously, chinese people needed special travel passes (通行证) to come to the sez. they also needed temporary residence permits (暂住证) to live and work here. to enjoy public benefits such as subsidized housing, medical care, and education for their children, they needed shenzhen household residency (深圳户口). as far as most chinese people were concerned, getting into the sez was like getting into a foreign country. thus, perhaps, the reason for another linguistic shift. very early into reform, shenzhen inhabitants (not all of whom were residents) started using the expression the interior (内地) not simply to refer to non-coastal regions (a question of relative geography), but also un-opened areas (a political-economic classification), including parts of guangdong.
(a word of warning on the use of words: when speaking mandarin, i have a tendency to use geographical terms from the perspective of shenzhen. this means i will say “the north (北方)” and mean “north of guangdong” and not “north of the yangtze,” which is more common in other parts of china. in the nineties, i actually heard shenzhen inhabitants refer to guangzhou as the interior, a classification few chinese in other cities would have come up with, let alone used in casual conversation. what’s interesting is that i use northern linguistic conventions when speaking in (admittedly americanized) english, where beijing seems to dominate our cognitive maps of china.)
what was special about shenzhen was that things could happen here that couldn’t happen elsewhere–factories built outside the national five-year plan, foreign investment on chinese soil, the creation of job and real estate markets, and the commodification of pleasure in ways that had once been condemned as bourgeois impediments to the revolution. the designation of land to meet particular political economic goals was common during the mao era. what was special about shenzhen, was that it was more about economic than political goals and this version of zoning spread quickly. in 1984, the government opened the fourteen coastal cities, in 1985 the three special deltas, and in 1992 much of the country.
all this reforming and opening of the interior meant that shenzhen was no longer special. clearly, after the death of deng and the ascension of jiang zemin, it became common to talk of shanghai, rather than shenzhen, as the harbinger of china’s global future. and so, shenzhen intensified the use of zoning to achieve economic competitiveness. at almost every administrative level (city, district, market town, street administration, and new village) as well as ministerial levels, shenzhen has opened various kinds of economic zones. some are simply new village factory areas and have no special status outside the village’s status, others are administratively recognized industrial and free trade zones with corresponding legal perks. thus, one of shenzhen’s three free trade zones, the futian district free trade zone abuts huanggang and shuiwei factory areas, which are roughly two kilometers from what will become the futian technology park.
saturday, i walked through the futian free trade zone. i was struck, once again, by the contradictions of development in shenzhen. this time specifically by that between industrial manufacturing and the city’s mandate to become a green city. the futian free trade zone aspires to be a garden in the midst of the city and in part succeeds. here, large buildings nestle behind landscapes of fake mountains and imported trees, while container trucks rumble down tree-lined boulevards. outside the barbed wire fence that separates shenzhen from hong kong, the shenzhen river burps up less methane than it did a few years ago. i photographed containers in bloom.
this weekend judi, xiaomei and i went costume shopping. as they figured out a look for a female pozzo, i wandered the streets of old shekou, wondering when these scenes of early reform would be replaced with more contemporary versions of modernity. once upon a time, only twenty years ago, shekou was new and improved, a beacon for shenzhen’s trail blazers, who had come to build a special economic zone without any idea what that might mean. at the time, even if these latterday pioneers spoke of reform in quite uncertain terms: feeling the rocks to cross the river (摸着石头过河), nevertheless they also spoke of a particular energy: the shenzhen spirit. hopeful, young, at the cusp. today, that world is already outdated and those young visionaries middle-aged. i have posted a few scenes of old shekou.
just when i thought it was safe to wear sandals, shenzhen embarked on a project to upgrade city sidewalks, ripping up roads that had been set only a few years previously. so once again, as the city improves its image, we pick our way through rubble and bricks, dust and exposed sewage pipes. a few photo-gripes here.
most construction sites in shenzhen are provisionally gated with cement and brick walls, glass edges, and barbed wire. once the project is finished, more elegant, or perhaps less blatent walls replace the makeshift as if it were all right, expected even to keep people off a construction site, but less savory to keep one’s neighbors outside the gate. i have uploaded some glass edges in my gallery.
Shenzhen Noted 